Saturday, 11 July 2015

Rider Reward - (Volume 2 Update)

When the 1989 Saskatchewan Roughriders managed to finally win only their second Grey Cup in eighty years of operations, long suffering Rider fans were finally rewarded for their years of unflinching support. To celebrate, the players that had finally got the 23 year gorilla off of the franchises' back were featured in full page colour posters in the Regina Leader-Post.

The set was written up in Collecting Canadian Football Volume 2, however only two of the posters were known to me at that time (Albert Brown & Vince Goldsmith) and they must have at least partially been issued into 1990. Each poster was of course on newsprint and would most likely have had regular newsprint content on the backs. Pictured above are Bobby Jurasin and Chuck Klingbeil versions from the newspaper.

Now newspaper posters are not every collector's cup of tea, because the paper is pretty crude, subject to acid content degradation and the image resolution is usually poor. The posters are also usually large and difficult to store. On the other hand, if you are a subscriber then they are pretty much free and are delivered to your home. If you are not a subscriber then they are generally pretty difficult to acquire precisely because they are not highly regarded and most of them get thrown out.

But if you happened to pay attention to memorabilia offerings from the Rider store, then as late as 1992 you were able to purchase a complete set of Rider "Collector Series" Posters for $5.00! As you can see below the posters were the same as what appeared in the newspaper, but on quality white poster stock (blank back) and without the newspaper name and publication date or page number at the top of the item. Unfortunately the low res scans I have of the store posters are poor and come from an eBay auction where the seller digitally altered the image with the Sample banner.

Kent Austin Newspaper version Kent Austin Store Poster Version

There were 24 posters in the set sold by the Rider store and if one was to troll through the Leader Post microfilms after the 1989 Grey Cup I suspect that you would find the same number of newsprint items. What's more, the posters from the store came autographed by the majority of the players (either eighteen or nineteen of them) featured on the items. As you can imagine personally autographed memorabilia items from the 1989 Rider Champions is going to be worth considerably more today than the .21 cents each poster cost originally. I think the recent eBay seller was asking around $60 per poster for the more common players in the group (but framed as well).

Here is the complete listing in no particular order:

Gary Lewis

Vince Goldsmith

Dave Ridgway

Chuck
Klingbeil

Mark Guy

Roger Aldag

Kent Austin

Mike
Anderson

Bobby Jurasin

Tim McCray

Bob Poley

Don
Narcisse

Dan Rashovich

Milson Jones

Dave
Albright

Albert Brown

Glen Suitor

Ray Elgaard

Jeff Fairholm

Richie Hall

Eddie Lowe

Jeff
Bentrim

John Gregory (Coach)

Team Photo Poster (Grey
Cup, #89 jersey, and 1989 team photo taken after the '89 Grey Cup)

If you were savvy enough to stock up on these items 25 years ago the reward would be pretty significant monetarily as well as emotionally. Thanks to Rider fan and collector Clint Taylor for a lot of the information about the store poster set.